Thanks to the success of his musical, Me and My Girl (1984), he was rich from his mid-twenties and able to buy a large house in Norfolk and all the classic cars and gadgets he could want. Strolling down the street in London in 1992 he ran into an American acquaintance who asked if he could think of anyone who could house-sit his suite at the Savoy for a few weeks. Well yes, said Fry, he could. The only trouble with living at the Savoy, he found, was that one got a teensy bit bored with finding the suite looking exactly the same every day, so he instructed the staff to hide the ashtray in different places.